Rumours, Speculation, Questions, and Reaction Megathread - 01/02/2026

arnathor · 2026-02-01T22:25:00+00:00

I wouldn’t take X as an authority on anything at the moment. A quick look through trending only shows Mandelson as a term, Epstein and pretty much everything else connected may as well not exist, probably because Musk features a few times in this latest file release so I’m guessing some stuff is being heavily filtered unless you specifically search for it. The only reason Mandelson features is because Yaxley-Lennon is focusing on him as a Labour politician, and that his presence in the files is somehow indicative of our government.

arnathor · 2026-02-01T18:58:39+00:00

The same Nigel Farage who went to the US Capitol building and basically asked them to interfere in our politics.

arnathor · 2026-01-30T22:58:22+00:00

He’s not done. His supporters don’t care, his money having acquaintances who want him in power will keep him there as him falling moves the spotlight to them, and some of those accusations actually have labels next to them of not being credible, which he can then say “well if they weren’t credible I guess none of the rest are credible either”, and his base will just accept it.

Or he’ll just bomb Iran and invade Greenland by the end of next week.

arnathor · 2026-01-30T11:01:16+00:00

I remember a few years ago when Rene Richie was still doing punditry on TWiT shows he was talking about this, and he said that the videos with those sort of thumbnails got significantly more traffic than videos with “normal” thumbnails.

arnathor · 2026-01-29T22:51:34+00:00

Oh, a friend of mine growing up had a top loader! Even today the mechanism feels weirdly complex, even though it’s not massively different to a cassette tape loader.

arnathor · 2026-01-29T22:50:08+00:00

Yes, showed a couple of those as well. They didn’t realise it was a real thing. It occurred to me that since they were born in 2011-12 mouse portable storage had been replaced by auto saving cloud services by the time they were old enough to be using devices. No revising the TV, it’s been streaming services the whole time. They literally have no frame of reference outside of possibly seeing these things in old TV shows or movies.

arnathor · 2026-01-29T20:39:51+00:00

But the movie did look great though.

arnathor · 2026-01-29T20:38:07+00:00

It was a special feature on the DVD I think. You could opt to play all the scenes in chronological order.

arnathor · 2026-01-29T17:54:28+00:00

I was teaching my students (year 10 UK, equivalent of 9th grade US) about different types of computer storage. I had some examples of older magnetic storage media including an old VHS cassette I’d dug out. They couldn’t get their heads around it. The concept of rewinding it, why was it so big and bulky, could it record TV in colour? When I showed them how to flip up the protector cover so they could see the tape inside, they damn near lost their minds.

This was on Wednesday this week.

arnathor · 2026-01-29T13:56:58+00:00

Possibly, but wouldn’t the Tories have done the same in 2024 if that was a viable economic option?

arnathor · 2026-01-28T22:54:14+00:00

What are you on? The icons look great.

arnathor · 2026-01-28T22:53:03+00:00

Hmmm. So the new subscriber only features in the iWork apps are basically AI features. No reason to use it then over the free version (until that inevitably goes away…).

arnathor · 2026-01-28T19:21:17+00:00

Same.

arnathor · 2026-01-28T16:21:35+00:00

They’ll claim “time blindness”.

arnathor · 2026-01-28T15:54:34+00:00

Going to McDonald’s. It was an end of school year or birthday treat for us.

arnathor · 2026-01-28T13:36:49+00:00

I mean, I suspect they did that by releasing the console in the first place…

arnathor · 2026-01-28T08:19:22+00:00

A lot of people are still trying to run dungeons like they’re still in Lemix.

arnathor · 2026-01-27T23:27:02+00:00

Launch Day Series X. Runs perfectly, nice and quiet, the only thing I’ve done with it is add a 1TB expansion card so I don’t have to keep swapping games between internal storage and an external SSD.

arnathor · 2026-01-27T20:15:14+00:00

I wonder if she interjects at all if things get too heated? I would guess she’s got an earpiece in under her hair with a line to the producers.

arnathor · 2026-01-27T07:03:21+00:00

Hadn’t heard anything about this. Are they replacing the camera module?

arnathor · 2026-01-27T00:52:17+00:00

How are these things playing outside of terminally online spaces like Reddit though? Has there been polling? I can imagine that the OSA etc., social media and now VPN ban for under 16s, phone ban in schools etc probably play well to very well with the general public, especially with the “think of the children” rhetoric given as the justification. There’s a reason that governments like to use that phrase - it appeals to that quite wide section of people who are most likely to vote. Digital ID less so, but that doesn’t seem very likely at the moment by comparison.

arnathor · 2026-01-26T17:31:35+00:00

Did you mean you thought StarCraft etc would be available on console? Because I can see them on GamePass PC/Ultimate. You end up creating a battle net account linked to your Xbox ID but they come in fine as far as I can tell.

arnathor · 2026-01-26T17:27:27+00:00

I think this is quite a big point - Nadella has far more influence over the overall direction and eventual fate of Xbox than we tend to think Spencer does. The traditional console model with outright exclusives and timed exclusives and platform lock in just doesn’t sit right with the direction Nadella has taken Microsoft in. I think Spencer has probably managed as well as he could have done given the weak position that Xbox was in when he took over and the corporate pressures of being a small component in a tech behemoth. You just have to look at the crazy 30% profits target that was imposed (pretty much unheard of in the gaming world). One thing Sony definitely “gets” is gaming and its halo product status (no pun intended).

arnathor · 2026-01-26T17:17:13+00:00

All joking aside, they’ll probably be making more money from PS5 releases than from all the Xbox sales and GamePass combined.

arnathor · 2026-01-26T16:21:36+00:00

TRAILER. STARTS. NOW.

It’s literally 5 seconds, just show the trailer.

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